Chocolate vs word count

      Our heroine sat hunched over her laptop desperately trying to stare down her nemesis.  She sighed, wondering when it all had gone so wrong.  One moment, the characters she had created were following her plot like good little children; the next they were bickering and fighting with her as though they should dictate the plot.  The story details, the little twists and turns that had seemed so brilliant last night while she was falling asleep had turned traitor and were nowhere to be found now that she really needed them.
Now, the word-count on her screen taunted her with its infuriating smallness; the blinking cursor seemed to laugh maniacally, daring her to type something, anything just to get that tally closer to the daily goal.
  "I WILL NOT resort to making my characters sing lyrics to songs that never end, or having them review the periodic table just to increase my word count!" she defied the blinking cursor - for what was at least the sixth time that half-hour.
  "Whose brilliant idea was this, anyway?" she grouched to her writing buddy.  Her writing buddy, instinctively knowing an answer wasn't really wanted smiled serenely and didn't bother to look up from her own plot.
  "Oh I give up!" our heroine conceded.  "You may have won the battle," she glared at the word count box, "but the war still wages.  I'm going for re-enforcements," she announced, dramatically flipping the laptop screen closed.

  "I need chocolate."

  Each word was punctuated with frustration and a hint of lingering bitterness toward uncooperative creativity.

  "Chocolate?"

      A fellow word-fighter materialized, sensing that the previously hostile war-zone had transitioned to a temporarily peaceful truce.
  "Yes," our heroine asserted firmly, uncurling her legs from the chair and working the kinks out of her shoulders.
  "Me, too," her ally sighed, plopping down on the almost lumpy couch.  "My hero is having an identity crisis and my villain is showing disconcerting hero-ish tendencies.  My story sounded so brilliant in my head and once I started putting it on paper it's falling a bit flat."
  "In that case we might need a cookie or two as well," our first heroine mused.
  "Will this fortification of comforting endorphins involve . . . . coffee, perhaps?" a third compatriot joined the ranks.
  "We might be able to handle that," the second heroine nodded thoughtfully.
  "I have just the thing," the first heroine brightened.  "I found it a few weeks ago and have been saving it for An Emergency."
  "I've been staring at the same paragraph for the last 45 minutes," the third heroine observed dryly.  "I think this qualifies."
  The other two nodded.
  "Think you can hold out for another half hour?  This shouldn't take too long after I do my mise en place."
  "There she goes again," the third heroine rolled her eyes.
  "We're fine," the second heroine said quickly, shoving her toward the door.  "Go.  Do your mise en mess thing and stop spouting weird words that normal people never use!  Don't you know that mixing Food Network and NaNoWriMo could be disastrous to my plot?!"
  The first heroine giggled as she quickly snapped a picture of the black board on her wall and retreated to the kitchen.
  "It looks yummy," she said to herself as she reviewed the original recipe, "but I think I'll make a few changes."
  "Oh for crying out loud!  Once, just once I'd like to see you make a recipe the way its written," the third heroine called after her.
  "Shhh!" the second heroine hissed.  "If you leave her alone long enough she'll forget we're in here.  If she starts talking to herself we might get some good dialogue inspiration out of this arrangement."
  "I'm not that entertaining," the first heroine called back to them as she propped the camera up on a shelf and started gathering her ingredients.

  Thanks to modern technology, there was a pot of fresh coffee brewing moments later.  And after a quick rummage in the pantry and refrigerator, our heroine had the ingredients she needed.

"2 ounces baking chocolate

1/4 cup sugar

1/4 tsp salt

2 cups milk

2 cups coffee

1 1/2 tsp vanilla

1/4 tsp cinnamon", 

she read the list to herself off the camera's view screen.

  "Me thinks that unsweetened baking chocolate could add complications," she continued.
  "But its easier than figuring out the cocoa equivalent," she shrugged.  "And you could easily stir in a little extra sugar if it isn't sweet enough."
  "True," she agreed with herself.  "Let's get the milk warming and we can figure out the rest as we go."
  "I'll use a bigger sauce pan so we have room to add the coffee later."
  "Good idea.  This says to use a double boiler to melt the chocolate, but 2 ounces really isn't all that much.  "
  "So rig something.  Double boilers haven't been around forever . . . what would your great grandmother have used?"
  "Good point.  I bet if I use a clothes pin to clip this bowl above the tea kettle that would work."

  "Be careful you don't burn yourself on the steam.  Oh, that's brilliant!"

  "I thought so.   I just hope the clothes pin holds.  I'd hate to have it drop the chocolate into the water," she smiled, very pleased with herself as she poked at the chocolate with a whisk.

  "Could you read the directions again?  Once its melted, what do I do next?"

  "Whisk in the cinnamon, salt and sugar."

  "Thank you."

  "Be careful you don't pop the clothes pin off!"

  "I am being careful!  Do you have any idea how hard it is to try cook and take pictures of what you're doing?"

  "Sweetie, calm down.  You're less likely to drop stuff if you're relaxed.  Now pour in a little of the hot coffee."

    "Okay," she sighed slowly.  "You're right.  But I think I'm going to take this off the hot water now.  This is going to involve a little more whisking than I think my rigged double boiler can handle," she observed.


 

  "Good idea," she agreed, moving the small bowl to a hot pad on the counter.  "Keep stirring until the coffee dissolves the sugar."  

  "I'll add the vanilla now and then taste it to see how that unsweetened baking chocolate is working out."

  "Not bad," she told herself.  "But it would definitely qualify for dark chocolate.  I'm not sure your compatriots are going appreciate that."

  "Probably not.  They are definitely of the 'sweet' chocolate camp.  I'll add another 2 tbsp. of sugar and that should get it up where semisweet would have been.  Are you going to add the rest of that coffee to the milk or should I?"

  "I'll do it.  You can add the chocolate in a minute."

"Oh that's pretty!  I love how the coffee turns the milk a soft, gentle brown.  Is it my turn?"

"Go for it."

  "Now we whisk it frothy, just because it's fun.  If you'll get the cups, I'll get the biscotti."

     Five minutes later a tray of biscotti and steaming mugs of Brazilian Hot Chocolate was sitting on the kitchen counter waiting to be carried into the fray.

       Laptops were ceremoniously closed with sighs of relief when the mugs were passed around.
  "To plots un-kinking," the first heroine toasted.
  "To meeting word counts before bedtime and being asleep by midnight," the second added.
  "To heroes who do what they're told . . . without argument," the third heroine finished solemnly, clinking the glasses 'round.  The first steamy sip was savored; and the tension of missing word counts began to ease.  Then, a lovely crunching of biscotti; contentious characters began to blur into a relaxing imagination.
  "Mmmm," someone sighed deeply.
  "This is really good."
  "I don't feel as crabby as I did a minute ago."
  "If y'all don't mind, a little peace and quiet seems to be in order.  I'm having a very serious conversation with my Brazilian Hot Chocolate and biscotti, and y'all are interrupting," a tiny, genteel voice scolded primly.  The three heroines stared in shock at the tea tray.
  "Is there any more of this very lovely caffeine spiked chocolate?" the third heroine asked quietly.
  "You haven't finished the first half of that cup," the first heroine objected.
  "But I just heard your writing buddy scold us for interrupting her enjoyment of her cup!  I didn't think I was that far gone, but if I'm hearing stuffed bears speak . . . I'm going to need way more chocolate."
  "No, I heard her too," the second heroine whispered. 
  "Me, too," the first heroine admitted slowly.  "I think we've been at this NaNoWriMo thing too long."
  They silently regarded the small, innocent looking bear for a moment.
  "Well, look at the bright side," the third heroine smiled.  "Being a little nuttier than usual could come in handy when battling stubborn word counts or goofy characters."
  The second heroine started giggling.
  "I bet a talking teddy bear would shock my hero into getting back on track," she grinned.
  "Teddy bears don't really fit in my plot," the third shrugged, picking her laptop up and opening the lid.  "I think I need a singing rock."
  The others giggled.
  "Okay," the first heroine conceded, laughing as she booted her computer back up.  "I'll add a quirky kitchen maid who can't get a straight answer out without turning it into another question.  Then we'll see what happens."
      The busy clack of computer keys, the occasional sipping of chocolate and crunch of nutty biscotti blended into a symphony of creativity.  And on the corner of the tea tray, a small bear sat with a tiny cup of chocolate, smiling a small smile to herself and thinking that, in the end, maybe she was the heroine of the story after all.

 The End

Gluten Free Brownies

      If asked what the most epic of failures is - so far - in my Gluten-free cooking experience, I'd have to say it is a toss up between my mum's birthday cake and the bean brownies.  Although, when you come right down to it, the fact that the birthday cake got eaten and the brownies got tossed is pretty definative. 
  If asked what my most appreciated success was, I'd have to say . . . . .  the brownies.  Huh?  Not the Bean Brownies (epic failure), The Brownies.  There's a difference.

      The Bean Brownies were a horrible study in contradiction.  Visually it was a nice brownie.  Unfortunately that is where the 'nice' ended: texturally it was moist, but it tasted incredibly dry.  There are some things that can't be fully explained - this would be one of them.  (By the way, Mrs. B . . . if you want to pass along your recipe for Black Bean Brownies, I'd like to see it.  I'm pretty sure whatever I tried was not what you had in mind when you said they were good.)

      On the other hand, we have The Brownies, adapted from GlutenFreeGoddess's Dark Chocolate Brownies.  When I mixed up the batter it tasted like brownie batter; when I slid it in the oven, it smelled like brownies.  And they tasted yum . . . just like normal brownies.  I was ecstatic!  And I wanted to share them with you.  But like most things, there were details I wanted to tweak . . . the first time I made them I substituted coconut flour for the almond meal, which worked but we weren't terribly fond of the fiberous texture it added.  And they were too sweet - ridiculously so.  Then again, there are people in this house who would tell you that it is near impossible for me to leave a good thing alone. 
      So I sat down today with my kitchen notebook, the Dark Chocolate Brownie recipe, and the recipe I used to use pre-GF.  (Aside from the flours used, the recipes were very similar.)   And there are a few things that we'll do differently next time . . . .

      Those are some pretty light brownies . . . I think the word I used when I pulled them out of the oven was "blond".  So it is definitely more of a "milk chocolate" brownie than "rich" or "dark".  But they'll do.  For now.    At least now I know the flour combination works, the texture turns out quite well, and the sugar ratio is almost right.

      Say hello to our Cast of Characters!  (Hey, look at that - this time Sugar made it.)  Here we have:

5 oz chocolate chips, which equals a generous 3/4 cup (I should have used baking chocolate - live and learn)

1/4 cup butter

1/4 cup coconut oil

(or you can use a full half cup of one or the other)

1 cup sugar (gahh!!)

3 eggs, lightly beaten

1 tbsp vanilla extract

1 cup buckwheat flour*

1/2 cup rice flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

*Before we get too far into this, I should mention that I added a little chia meal to this.  I threw about a tablespoon in my mum's electric coffee grinder, buzzed it a few times . . .

 . . . and threw it in the bottom of the measuring cup before I started to measure out the buckwheat flour.  I figured it would work really well as a binding agent instead of the gums I'm trying to avoid.  Okay - back to the recipe.

     Before we get started, lets preheat our oven to 350 F.  Now the fun part.  :)  Put your chocolate chips and butter/coconut oil in a saucepan and melt over medium heat.

      Get it nice and melty . . . and then exercise some self control and refrain from eating it right out of the pan as is.  Tough, I know, but it will be worth it later.  Once that is done remove it from the heat, and while it is cooling - and you're not sticking your fingers in for just a small taste - measure your dry ingredients into a bowl.  Make a little dip in the center and pour in the whisked eggs and vanilla.

      The instructions say to pour the eggs and chocolate in at the same time, but my chocolate was still a bit warm.  And runny, scrambled chocolate eggs didn't sound appealing.  So I did the eggs first, and then added the chocolate.

(Don't eat it yet, don't eat it yet, don't!) 

 . . . . ahem!  Once you get the chocolate in there, beat the stuff until it is a bit glossy.  Then pour it in your greased pan. 

(I will not eat the batter, I will not eat the batter . . . .)

Now smooth it out nice.  We don't want the Franklin Mountain Range to show up in our oven.  Ahh . . . that's better. 

(Now its okay to lick the spatula . . . if you really want to.  Just don't "find" a batter wrinkle that needs fixing afterwards. )
 

      Slide it into the oven and bake for 32-35 minutes, or until the brownies are set.  And while you're waiting, clean up.  No really - of all the details that go along with cooking, this is the one I am most likely to forget.  Unless my recipe involves half of the mixing-bowls in our cupboard, various measuring utensils and a dozen mixing spoons clean up should only take about five minutes.  So I'm not quite sure why I end up delaying this part . . . . yet another thing I need to work on.

      Once your brownies are done go ahead and sample - although they really are a little easier to cut when they've been given a chance to cool a little.  Oh yum!  (Please don't count all the "taste tests" that are missing from our original photo.)  When we got serious about serving up a scoop of vanilla ice cream and a drizzle of mint chocolate sauce made it fancy.  Oh sigh . . . . it doesn't get any yummier than that.  Gluten or not. 

Gluten Free Gingerbread

      I've been craving gingerbread for the last couple weeks.  I like gingerbread, but there are so many things I like more that I don't usually crave it.  Blame it on the cooling weather.    I browsed my current list of gluten-free resources, but didn't find anything that struck my fancy - or fit the ingredients that live in my pantry.  Almond flour sounds like a really lovely thing to work with, but its expensive; and I really didn't want to have to grind half a cup of six different flours just to make a snack.  I'm willing (occasionally) to admit it: I'm lazy.  So I grabbed my kitchen notebook - that I should have been recording gluten-free experiments in all along - and decided to try adapt the gingerbread recipe I tried earlier this spring.  Would you like to join me?

     Here we have our assembled cast of characters . . . . minus Sugar and Boiling Water.  (Sugar was late that day and Water was too busy working at boiling to grace us for the Cast Photo.)  My kitchen notebook was hosting the party - one page full of the original recipe from The Fanny Farmer Cookbook, and one page ready for all my experimental notes.
  Grease (I opted not to flour) one 9 inch baking pan and we were set to get our two bowls out: one for the dry ingredients and one for the wet.  We'll start with dry, since they are far less complicated.

      Since I'm stubbornly sticking to the whole gluten free theory (which occasionally shows up in my dreams - not good!) I changed the 2 1/2 cups of regular flour for the same amount of an all-purpose gluten free mix.  Which I am waiting for permission to post here so y'all know what that is.  But for now, we'll keep going.  On top of the flour I dumped:

2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

2 tsp powdered ginger

approximately 1/4 tsp fresh grated ginger, just because I could

      Originally the recipe called for 1/2 cup butter.  But we only just restocked that lovely ingredient (there are so many things that just taste better when made with butter) and I was a bit gun-shy of running out again.  So I used 1/4 cup butter and 1/4 cup coconut oil.  (Shh!!  Don't tell Sharpi or Chickadee!)  That went in the bowl and I moved on to the next ingredient, which was our late Sugar. 
Whoa Nellie!  It calls for a cup??  For that small pan?  Phfff!  Forget that.  One of the on-going debates in my house is neatly labeled "How Much Sugar is Too Much", and the lines that have been drawn in the proverbial sand are deep and immovable.  Sharpi and Chickadee  have what I consider Liberal Views on the subject; they view my opinions with suspicion, especially when I started  griping that milk tasted too sweet and stopped drinking it.  (It was suggested that somebody was pouring sugar into the milk pitcher in an attempt to sabotage the no-sugar rule, but I wasn't the one who said so.)  I'm not completely anti-sugar - yet - but a cup definitely seemed like a ridiculous amount.  So I cut it back to 3/4 cup.  (I would like it known that I wanted to cut that silly cup in half, but I didn't in the interests of diplomatic relations.  Points please!)

      Here we beat that sugar and butter/coconut oil until light and fluffy.  Once that is done we add two eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.  Next: pour in 3/4 cup molasses . . . feel free to lick the spoon of lingering yummy-ness when you're done. 

      Now, if you looked closely at the cast of characters, you might have noticed an additional ingredient that one doesn't usually associate with Gingerbread.  Unless your mum buys black-strap molasses, like mine does.  Black-strap molasses is pretty strong and would have no trouble covering up the spice in this cake, so I thinned mine with some brown rice syrup (I think the ratio was about 1/4 cup rice syrup and 1/2 cup molasses - I was kind-of making it up as I went).  Once you get the molasses beat into your mixture, very carefully add 3/4 cup of the boiling water.  I would really recommend using a hand whisk to mix that in - an electric mixer has a tendency to spit that hot molasses tainted liquid all around the kitchen . . . . ahem, lets move on, shall we?
      Once you get all that mixed up, you can dump in your bowl of dry ingredients and mix it up until well blended.  This is the part where it would have been really helpful to have someone mixing a batch of normal (read gluten inclusive) batch of this recipe with me.  I knew from previous experience that whole wheat flour absorbs water differently than white flour; and through the gluten free experiment I'm seeing learning that the same rule applies for various whole grains - rice doesn't absorb the same amount of liquid as, say, sorgum or oatmeal.  So when I mixed in my all-purpose gluten-free flour mix the batter was really, really runny.  But I plowed on.  Or poured on, if you prefer.

      Halfway through my pour the little voice inside - aka, the Baker's Conscience - started vigorously waving a little red flag that said, "Too much batter for that pan!"  And I listened.  I've had several baking efforts result in reeking, charred messes in the bottom of our oven because the batter Vesuvius-ed out of its baking tin.  And I have no desire to repeat those epic failures.  So I filled my pan halfway and poured the rest of the batter into paper lined muffin tins.  Which begs the interesting question: the recipe originally specified a 9 inch square pan, and I'm pretty sure round versus square won't make half-the-batter difference.  Did pans have taller sides when The Fanny Farmer Cookbook was originally published?  I digress . . . .

      I slid the pans into an oven preheated at 350 F and sat back to wait.

      The smaller pan sizes meant I had to adjust bake-time, but it seemed to work fairly well.  After about ten minutes in the oven the batter was rising nicely; after fifteen minutes it was starting to look like normal gingerbread.  At 22 minutes, the mini gingerbreads were done: at 27 the cake was done. 

  
   Looks fairly normal . . . . . smells fairly normal.  I think this might have worked.  Wooo-hoo!   

      Taste tests also proved quite satisfactory, though I don't think anyone would have gone so far as to say, "perfect gingerbread - don't do anything different next time."  The texture was very nice - moist and flavorful, but a little too light.  It made for a little crumbling in the 9 inch cake, so I think if I repeat this experiment, I'll add a little chia meal to the flour as a binding agent.  For some reason the minis didn't have the crumby factor, so they were closer to what I wanted.  Though I still would like a denser cake.

      It isn't quite perfect, but it came close.  And it tasted good, which isn't as easy as it sounds in the world of Gluten-Free.  Mmmm . . . that was tasty . . . .
      Any favorite gingerbread tricks or spice combinations you want to share for my next experiment?